Serpent's Egg
by DezoPenguin
Summary: In British-ruled Hong Kong, a violent death, a chance meeting, and a trail of money set a young girl's feet on the path to a life of bloodshed...or in other words, it's a Christie backstory fic.
1. Chapter 1

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Backstory fiction on video game characters is always a bit of a risk. One never knows when the actual developers will go on and provide those details and completely invalidate the story concept. Dead or Alive seems especially risky in these matters, because while the games themselves provide an absolute minimum of detail, there's a fairly developed story behind it (I get a headache sometimes, trying to trace all the relationships among the ninja and their bloodlines). So it's entirely possible that there's already information in the world, available only to those fluent in Japanese, which provides Christie with a completely different background. I can only say that I've tried to create this story to harmonize with what we know of her abilities and personality as seen in the Dead or Alive games themselves._

_And with any kind of luck, at least be better than the movie version ;)_

-X X X-

She sat up, decadent crimson satin sheets clinging momentarily to perspiration-slick patches of flesh before their own weight pulled them free to slither down across her milk-white skin. The man laying next to her looked up and smiled at the sight.

"Oversight would shit a brick if they knew we were here together."

The woman frowned down at him.

"I can't believe I let you kiss me with that mouth."

Louis Arnholt snorted with laughter.

"I can't believe it either, sometimes."

She ran a hand over the sweat-matted curls on his chest.

"Oh? Am I so unattractive as all that?"

Her voice was husky and sensual; the purr of it sent a pulse of heat to Arnholt's groin despite their recent exertions. _Better than Viagra_, he thought to himself.

"You _must_ be joking." Unlike women, who so often found a way to convince themselves they were ugly, flawed no matter how beautiful they were, men had a remarkable power of self-deception in the opposite direction. Balding, aging, flabby men were convinced they were God's gift to women and each rejection inevitably came as a surprise. Yet this woman's beauty--no, more the sheer force of her sexuality--made Arnholt look at himself with an unusual clarity of vision. He was acutely aware that despite the fact that he still rigorously worked out with weights three times a week and ran at least a mile whenever he could fit it into his schedule, age was taking its toll. His brown hair and the dark stubble on his chin were laced with gray, and too many years of red meat and three-martini lunches had added thickness to his buttocks and thighs, added a hint of a belly. Oh, his immaculately tailored suits concealed the flaws for the most part, but Arnholt was acutely aware that his most attractive feature was his status as vice-president of R&D for DOATEC. The only whimsical thing about the Dead Or Alive Tournament Executive Committee was its name; the multinat was pure, undiluted power in a world defined by money and technology, and power was still the most potent aphrodisiac.

His wife, for example, thrilled to it, loved the bitter envy of her circle of friends whose husbands' jobs or occasionally their own (though less likely, since women of power tended not to cluster with social ornaments) did not measure up.

That didn't make any difference to Christie, though, Arnholt thought as her lips traveled down his chest in soft bites. She hadn't so much as mentioned his job during the times they were together. Of course, she was with DOATEC as well, attached to field ops, so that may have been part of it. Indeed, he'd half-expected the affair to be prompted by one of his rivals as an attempt to gain information, which was why he'd made damn sure not only to not _talk_ about work but to not even bring along his laptop, PDA, or other vulnerable data. But she'd made no attempts to pry anything out of him--at least none that he'd _noticed_--over the two weeks.

Then she took him into her mouth and he groaned heavily, all thoughts leaving him but her wet heat and the silken brush of her white hair against his thighs. Only when he felt he couldn't stand it any longer did he reach down, pulling her up so that she straddled him. She smiled wickedly and took him into herself with a slow, sensuous corkscrewing motion of her hips until her lithe body was fully settled on his.

Afterwards, she remained sprawled on him, his big hands stroking her back almost tenderly.

"I don't know what to make of you," he said, his voice heavy with the effort.

"Oh? Am I so complex?" Christie said. _She_ wasn't panting for breath, yet more evidence of her youth.

"You're a woman, aren't you?"

She laughed, teasing his skin with her fingernails.

"Oh, most definitely."

"But there's more to it. You're not just some ordinary employee, not even for security or field ops."

Another laugh.

"Louis, you're not going to say, 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a job like this,' are you?"

"Yeah...well, maybe I am. I mean, take me. Story of my life takes two minutes, tops. College football star, snapped an MCL my senior year, missed my shot at the pros and went to grad school instead. Lucky I had a brain or I'd have been screwed but good."

Christie wriggled on top of him.

"Okay, so I guess I was anyway, in a matter of speaking," Arnholt said with a grin. "You know what I mean. You're half my age, if that, and your life would take ten times longer to tell."

She looked at him, the shades of something stirring in her pale eyes, then glanced at the clock and pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"All right, then. We have the time."

-X X X-

_Hong Kong_

_The Past_

Life--and money--had always moved fast in the Crown Colony, and never more so than in the decade leading up to its return to China. Political posturing caused the Hang Seng to sway back and forth like a drunken uncle on his way out of the pub, markets booming and crashing with the latest announcements, accords, and wild rumors out of London or Beijing. No one knew just how far common sense would stand in the path of blind ideology and face among nations. Fortunes were made in such an environment. They were also lost.

Christie had never particularly cared for her mother. From an early age she had perceived that the woman was essentially artificial, a polished creation of society. The right bloodlines, a nanny and governess followed by the right schools had turned out a perfectly polished jewel fit to adorn the household and the arm of a man of power and influence. To Christie's father she had been, in essence, a part of the outfitting of his career, like the Savile Row suits, the platinum Rolex, and the house on Victoria Peak. Christie had never sensed love between husband and wife, nor indeed between mother and herself, both of which to her child's mind seemed wrong and out of place in such a perfectly polished setting. She was perhaps eight when the thought reached her that if she were to cut into her mother's flesh there would be no blood, no bone, just empty air.

It wasn't that Christie _hated_ her mother. That would have been impossible; the idea that the woman could be real enough to inspire an emotion as powerful and tangible as hatred was positively laughable.

Nonetheless, when she looked down at the corpse sprawled in front of the door, the only thought that greeted her ten-year-old mind was that the blood leaking from the two gunshot wounds would surely stain the Aubusson carpet.

Tiny wisps of smoke were still rising from the barrel of the gun, Christie noticed. The ivory-handled Beretta was a prized possession of her father's, an heirloom of his own father, and it had done its work well.

"She was going to leave me," he said. In the dimly lit study his eyes seemed to shift colors, going from gray to pale blue to lavender and back again. "Can you imagine it? _She_ said that she was going to leave me. She couldn't be associated with me any more, that it wouldn't be _fitting_, under the circumstances."

Christie didn't precisely understand what those "circumstances" were. Her father had been president of the Trans-Pacific Development Bank, and now he was not, though the arcane financial causes for that were beyond her understanding. Though no doubt they had been beyond her mother's, as well, so perhaps this was not important.

She certainly understood her father's incredulity. The entire idea of her mother making a decision about her life was almost laughable, ludicrous.

"I couldn't have that, don't you see? She had _nothing_ of her own. Oh, she had a face, a figure, fine manners, but the ability to provide for herself? She was fit for nothing but to live the life _I_ gave to her, and she thought that she could just walk out when it suited her?"

The gun barrel shook as he pointed it at Christie.

"You understand, don't you, Christie?"

She smiled brightly at him.

"Of course, Papa," she replied at once. It would always nag at her in later years just why she had said it. Had it been from some instinctive sense that it was what she _had_ to say, or had she spoken what was in her heart at that moment? The question usually came to her after a couple of Chivas Regals, but the answer never came at all.

He laughed when he said it, high-pitched and hysterically, but his features settled at once, and he said, very seriously, "I thought you'd understand. You're the only real thing the bitch ever did in her life. Maybe the only real thing I ever did in mine, too."

Her eyes never left his as he turned the gun, pushed the barrel between his lips, and pulled the trigger.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hong Kong_

_Three Years Later_

The way in which Three-Ox Liu met Christie always seemed to him to have been ordained by fate. Nothing else, he felt, could have explained the confluence of events. Word had come to him that one of the small operators in arms and heroin trading had decided to overstep the bounds that the independent groups were permitted to occupy. The Red Phoenix Triad was not so large as the Green Pang or the 14K, and to permit an upstart like Lo Whan to infringe on their territory would be an intolerable loss of face. For this reason, Liu went to oversee the chastisement personally.

He spotted the girl as she came up an alley between two crumbling tenements. A girl of thirteen, just the age of his own son Sheng, moreover an English girl with stark white hair, working as a runner attracted attention, and of course Liu had gathered as much intelligence as possible about the capabilities of his enemy before launching his attack. He himself was following two of Lo Whan's men who had fled their master's warehouse where the Red Phoenix had already dispatched eight.

The two men, in their panic, did not know they were being followed. Liu was deliberate in his pursuit, had sensed the shifting of the crowd as the two men passed through it, the essence of their fear tangible among the greed of the stall owners and the day-to-day concerns of the shoppers. When the two men had turned aside to go down the alley, their progress had been as easy to follow by the consternation left in their wake as if they'd laid down a blazed trail of red paint. Christie had been coming the opposite way when they met her.

"You!" one cried. "It is you who has brought this bad fortune upon us! Lo Whan was mad to ever have taken you in!"

She looked at him, amazement plain on her face.

"What's happened?"

"What has _not_ happened?" the other man barked. "The Red Phoenix has come, that's what!"

"I told Lo Whan he was a fool, but _you_ inflamed him with greed! You made him think he could be bigger than he was! You brought death to all of us!"

This was interesting, thought Liu. Did the man blame the girl out of superstition and bigotry, or did they mean something else, something tangible? In any case it bore watching and it was this curiosity which piqued his interest.

"Now we will return the favor!" bellowed the thug, and the two of them rushed her. The girl was already in motion, though, reaching into the pocket of her baggy leather jacket and pulling out a tiny pistol, .22 or .25 caliber. She fired without hesitation into the body of the nearer man, the shots no louder than the pop of a firecracker.

The gun, however, seemed to have little effect. Certainly it did not stop the thug's momentum; he crashed into her, knocking the gun away. The second of Lo Whan's men, a step behind, had pulled out from beneath his coat a hand axe, as if he was a "hatchet man" in an American pulp novel. He raised the weapon to swing, but never got the chance.

Liu's hand closed around the thug's wrist. It was a big hand as Liu was a big man. At six feet, three inches and two hundred and sixty pounds, he was massive for a Chinese, especially since there was not an ounce of fat on him. His nickname had come from a story that in his home village it had taken three yoked oxen to match his strength. It was a ludicrous tale, not the least because Liu had been born and raised in Hong Kong, but there was also essential truth in it. His strength stopped the thug's blow effortlessly, not deflecting it but merely negating the attack with raw force. Liu pulled, his grip not merely incapacitating the man's weapon arm but using it as a lever to control his body. The thug's torso was easily exposed to a brutal strike that shattered ribs.

Liu did not let up for an instant. Like the tiger, his style of fighting was to attack, always attack relentlessly. His size and strength let him shrug off incidental blows while he quickly moved to crush his opponents, in the philosophy that the best defense was to incapacitate one's enemy so they could not mount any offense at all. In under a minute the would-be hatchet man was left dead.

Meanwhile, the wounded man had seized the girl's throat in an attempt to strangle her. She did not try to break the hold but instead raked at his eyes with her nails. They tore away the sunglasses that he wore in imitation of American or Japanese gangster's, but he jerked his head back to avoid further damage, his longer reach keeping her at bay. She tried to kick out at his groin, but he took the blow off his thigh. Whether he'd been fatally wounded by her bullets, or even if so he'd last long enough to finish strangling the girl was an open question, but by that time Liu had finished off the other man and he coolly snapped the thug's neck from behind.

The girl looked up at him warily. The marks on her throat were plain, standing out an angry red on her pale skin. She had strange eyes, Liu thought, as pale as her skin but with a strange, shifting color he found hard to define. For a moment they would look blue, then appear to have a violet tint, then again the color would fade to be almost white.

Opal eyes, he thought. Ghost eyes.

Her body was tense, poised to run or to try to defend herself, though Liu suspected she knew that would be futile.

"Don't make me chase you," he said.

"Are you going to try to kill me, too?" she replied in flawless Cantonese. It wasn't _quite_ a shock, from an English girl who'd probably grown up there, but still caught Liu off-guard.

"That's make saving you a waste of my time." Liu bent down, picked up her gun, and gave it back to her. She put it back into her pocket, which he watched the whole way to be sure. He'd seen that she was willing to defend herself with lethal action.

"I'm glad that you did, but why?"

"They were Lo Whan's men."

She smiled then, knowingly.

"You're Red Phoenix."

"Yes." Further explanation was unnecessary. "Come with me. I want to know what this dog was talking about." He nudged the corpse of the man she'd shot with his toe.

"All right."

"That easy?"

"I took Lo Whan's money. I wasn't one of his gang, but you know that."

Liu did. She was a child, a female, and she wasn't Chinese. It impressed him, though, that she said it as calmly as she did. He had Sze Kau, 49s, who didn't have the courage she did when facing possible death.

"You're not afraid of inconvenient truths, are you, Ghost Eyes?"

"It seems to me that truth is a weapon like any other, to be used when needed."

Liu's hand flicked out, taking her by the shoulder. She had, he noticed, superb reflexes and had seen the move coming, but had not known the correct way to avoid it. He exerted pressure, forcing her to her knees.

"You speak wisdom, but you don't know how to apply it," he said. "I watched you fight. You have the will to battle, to kill. You do not shy away from death, but you don't know how to create it. Not yet."

"Yet?"

He gave her a hand up, smiling broadly.

"Let's get out of this stinking alley. Then we can talk."

Liu took her to Grandmother Pai's noodle house, a place he'd frequented often while growing up. Pai had been an old woman when Liu was a child and looked exactly the same now. Her Cantonese was laced with a broad northern accent, which perhaps explained her liking for noodles rather than rice. No one ordered at Pai's; she set the steaming bowls before them, full of fresh seafood and tender yet crisp vegetables, to be washed down with pots of hot, strong tea. The girl ate with gusto, knowing enough not to discuss business until their bowls were empty. Good manners--or perhaps just hunger.

"So then," Liu began. "Let's start with your name, Ghost Eyes."

She told him. Her last name rang a faint chord in his mind, but he could not place it.

"I'm Liu," he replied, and her eyes widened.

"Not the one they call Three-Ox Liu?" she asked.

"Some people do."

"I've heard of you! You're a 438 with the Red Phoenix!" she said in an excited whisper. With a grin she added, "Lo Whan would soil himself at the mention of your name."

Since Liu's men had made a very graphic example of Lo Whan for the benefit of those who would infringe on Red Phoenix territory, he found it eminently reasonable, but he still found the reaction gratifying.

"One acquires a reputation. Now, those men in the alley seem to have given _you_ a reputation. The one accused you of bringing down Lo Whan."

"Sung was a superstitious fool. He hated me because I'm British and female. I don't know which was the worse sin."

Liu was not particularly fond of the British, himself. For the most part he found them arrogant, as if the fact that for a generation they'd possessed the greatest empire on Earth made them somehow the only civilized people on the planet. This was, however, a generalization rather than a rule, useful only in talk and worthless in drawing conclusions about individuals.

"Undoubtedly true, but there is more than that."

She watched him carefully.

"You seem very confident of that."

"Only greed would have made Lo Whan stupid enough to challenge the Red Phoenix. Only the chance for an extraordinary return would have given him the courage to risk it. What was of value to him could be of value to us--and we are far better equipped to deal with threats."

"And what do I get for cooperating?"

"Is your life not enough?"

"Death and I are old friends."

He recalled again her immediate response to Sung's attack, her lack of fear or hesitation in firing her gun, the way she'd gone after his eyes. The germ of an idea he'd had then began to take root.

_Master Su_.

Maybe, just maybe Liu could meet Christie's price after all. There would be no loss of face in that...not if the payment he had in mind was something that would _benefit_ him and the triad when all was said and done.

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. It was almost as if he were offering a bribe to himself.

"Not yet," he answered Christie, "but that will change."

-X X X-

_NOTE: The danger in introducing characters from a foreign culture is obvious. Without sufficient research, it's all too easy to give them names that make no sense whatsoever (as if, for example, a non-English speaker gave an American male the name "Jennifer"...or for that matter "Pencil"). Worse yet are the names that turn into puns, or translate themselves into something like "maggot nesting in camel dung."_

_My knowledge of Chinese is absolutely zero. If any of the ethnically Chinese characters in this story possess names which fit the above patterns, then I hope at least my ignorance gives those who do know the language something to laugh at!_


	3. Chapter 3

The metal-banded door was opened by a small, ratlike man. His name was Fung, which Liu knew only because the other small, ratlike men who had been Master Su's servants had all been named Fung. Brothers, perhaps, and almost certainly family. This Fung had the bad manners to goggle openly, eyes going back and forth from Liu to Christie.

"Take us to Master Su!" Liu barked. His patience was limited, after all, and the Fungs one and all never failed to raise in him an urge to crush them underfoot like loathsome insects.

"Y-yes, sir!"

Fung glanced back over his shoulder at least three times in amazement as he took them through the rabbit warren of passages, up and down stairs. Was it really that surprising that he'd brought Christie here, Liu thought? Was it Ghost Eyes' appearance, her presence there, or her being in company with Liu that mattered?

"This is a confusing place," Christie said, displaying her Western curiosity. "Why all the twists and turns?"

"Master Su's home," Liu began, thinking as he did that _nest_ was a more appropriate word, "is built out of parts of four buildings. On the other side of these walls, dozens of people live, not knowing what lies right in the middle of all of them. A passage there, a room here, all bits and pieces of a whole."

He hoped she had not missed the quality of the paneling, of the furnishings, so out of line with the rest of the district.

Liu had never been asked to wait when he visited Master Su, and yet always found his host waiting for him. He suspected that Fung had some method of informing his master that guests were coming, and that in the course of the winding passages he led Liu past observation points so Su could see who was visiting and prepare.

This time was the same as all others. Master Su welcomed them in an elaborately furnished reception room, no surprise at all on his thin, hawklike face. He was of middling height, though his thinness made him seem taller; his entire body was like a length of tough, flexible whipcord. He wore loose clothes of midnight blue and gold.

"Greetings, tiger," he hailed Liu. Su always called him that, regardless of Liu's nickname. Liu thought this very perceptive of the snake master, since it was in his heart how he thought of himself. "And what have you brought for me today?"

"I have brought you a pupil."

"Indeed?"

Su's gaze flicked to Christie for a moment and he dismissed her with a snort.

"Bah! I do not teach _gwai loh_. Do tigers now have a sense of humor?"

This reaction was not unexpected. Master Su did not have the experience with Christie that Liu had. He would not know what Liu did, what he had seen of the girl's spirit. Liu needed to convince the master of this; he would not incur a debt for the girl's sake.

"Of course. It is only prey that cannot laugh."

Master Su ran a finger along his lips in a curious gesture.

"You are in an unusual mood today."

"Success breeds such."

"Ah, the destruction of Lo Whan and his minions." His eyes again touched Christie. "Of course, now I recognize the girl, once placed in proper context. She is your spy, then?"

"I was thinking that she could be yours."

"Is that so." He turned to directly face Christie. "Do you think you could be mine?"

"That would depend on who you are, Master Su," she said with a faint smile. "Liu has only told me that you're someone who can teach me."

"You trust the tiger that much?"

"I trust that he hasn't had me killed with the rest of Lo Whan's people. It makes me...inclined to believe him."

The snake master chuckled.

"Very well, then. I will tell you what he sees. I am a master of _She Quan_."

"'Snake Fist'? Is that a Chinese martial art?"

"Quite. Your friend the tiger takes his inspiration from that animal, but he does not feel you are a tiger as well. Tell me, if you were going to kill the tiger, how would you do it?"

"I'd shoot him in the head. Preferably from behind," she answered without hesitation. The ease with which she answered startled Liu a bit, even though it was in part why he'd brought her there.

"That is an interesting answer. Why do something so dishonorable? Why shirk honest battle?"

"You asked me how I'd kill him, Master Su, not what I'd do in an honest fight. If I tried anything else, he'd tear me apart." She glanced slyly at Liu and added, "My father had a tiger's-head trophy hanging in his study. It was killed by his grandfather in India. The truth is, he was up in a tree and fired a high-powered rifle, after luring the tiger out with a staked kid. You can't fight a tiger, only kill it."

Master Su laughed.

"Oh, yes, tiger, you have found me a rare one this time. I believe I shall make her my student after all...or are you having second thoughts?"

Liu grinned, though a bit halfheartedly. Master Su's teasing was generally at his expense, and it tended to be of the kind where one really _hoped_ that he was joking. He supposed that was the way with snakes.

"Playing with baby snakes always gives me second thoughts. They may not know how to bite yet, but they're still poisonous."

"That is a very wise answer."

-X X X-

"So there you have it," Liu told the girl. "Master Su will teach you the arts of _She Quan_."

"What made you think I wanted it?" Christie asked. It wasn't a challenge; she sounded genuinely curious.

"Why would an educated British girl be a runner for Lo Whan, earning little respect and equally little pay?" he answered her with a question of his own.

"I didn't want to be a whore."

"The traditional profession of runaway or abandoned females," he agreed. "And to avoid that, you'd have to fight. Some people won't accept anything else unless you kill them. I watched you pull the gun on Sung. You recognized danger, but there was no fear. I can use that."

"_Use_ it, Liu?"

"Oh, yes. It's easy to teach someone how to kill. But to give them the will to do so...that isn't easy. Most people have to put themselves into it to make themselves kill. Hatred, love, greed, fear. Those crazies who strap bombs to themselves do it for faith. That was me when I was young, a 49. The Red Phoenix was my family and I killed when told for love of them. You, though, Ghost Eyes..."

She folded her arms across her chest, a wry little smile on her lips.

"I do what I have to," she said. "Are you saying that you want to train me up as an assassin? Your assassin?"

The fact that she wasn't insulted by the idea was promising, Liu thought, and a little scary.

"It means power," he said, "and a level of prestige you could never earn any other way. To say nothing of money."

"No, let's talk about money," Christie countered, "because that's what it's about. Your payment for what I know, and you bid high, Liu. Generously, even."

"An offer's generosity is determined by the return on the investment. I do not consider myself a generous man."

The lights of the city sparkled out all around them as they walked, surrounding them in a blaze both garish and brilliant. Some foreigners Liu had met compared it to Tokyo, and others to Las Vegas. He had never seen these cities and did not care if he ever did. Hong Kong was more than enough for him. Besides, it was the gateway to China. The world inevitably came to it.

Christie took a computer disk out of her jacket pocket, a 3.5-inch floppy. The bright orange plastic made it look like a child's toy instead of a carrier of valuable data.

"What is this?" Liu asked, speaking of course of the files it contained and not the disk itself.

"My father's legacy."

"Your father?"

"He was the president of the Trans-Pacific Development Bank before his death three years ago."

The significance of Christie's last name crashed through Liu's mind like a thunderbolt. He identified her father at once, an innovative financier, some said a genius, who had steered his company through the shoals of Hong Kong's constantly changing economy and himself to wealth and privilege. Unfortunately, he had been addicted to risk and his mounting gambling debts had led him to embezzle from the bank. His defalcations had been easily concealed by the bank's success, until its owners had decided to abandon the PacRim and sold the thriving asset to a Japanese _keiretsu_. Efficient and thorough in matters of business as always, the Japanese's audit had soon revealed the truth, and Christie's father found himself without a job and with staggering personal debts.

The man had murdered his wife and committed suicide, making for a three days' sensation in the Colony. Liu had heard nothing of a daughter, but was aware that the man's entire estate had been seized by creditors. This explained, perhaps, why Christie had taken to the streets, though it amazed Liu that no family member had taken her in. In this area Liu believed the _loh faan_ truly were barbarians.

"I took that from my father's desk," Christie explained, passing it over to Liu. "I knew that it was important, though of course I didn't understand _how_. I was just a child then."

Implying that she now was not. He could hardly argue the point.

"It turns out that it's his archive of contacts and business connections, who's doing what and why."

"And you say that this was what instilled Lo Whan with the desire to overreach himself? These files are three years old. Three weeks makes something out of date here in Hong Kong."

"That's true about business deals and financial plans," Christie agreed, "but what about blackmail?"

"Blackmail?"

"From a business standpoint, leverage in a deal. There is information on how certain people can be...leveraged...in among the data. Some of those people are gone, washed away in the current of commerce. Others aren't. And still others have moved _up_ in the world, making them even more useful--and vulnerable."

Liu thought about that. In Hong Kong--probably everywhere, but certainly there--business was all interconnected. Customs and police, government officials, organized crime, financiers and corporate concerns, all the way up to the _tai pan_, all moved together as one, as if many spiders had come together to spin a single web. Lo Whan had been such a spider, who believed the information on the disk could let him control the web, but he had been eaten by a larger spider before he could grow fat on new power.

He tapped the disk against his palm.

"You took all this," he said, "when you were ten years old?"

"Yes."

"And you did it immediately following your father's death, or else it would have been taken by the police, by a creditor, or by whomever supervised the estate."

"He'd showed me where he kept it," Christie said with a shrug. "I was his daughter. Who else deserved it?"

Liu had the sudden image of her pushing a body out of the way, opening a hidden panel in a blood-spattered desk, though of course he had no idea what part of that, if any, matched with reality. Nonetheless, her story certainly confirmed the impressions he'd had of her. The girl certainly had the mind to become a successful assassin. Moreover, she would be bound to the Red Phoenix, indeed to Liu personally, by virtue of her race and sex in an Asian underworld.

Liu tucked the computer disk away in his pocket, wondering which of the two prizes he'd come away with would ultimately prove to be the more valuable.


	4. Chapter 4

_Three Years Later..._

Garish red and yellow lighting turned the Inferno into a parody of a Christian hell. It was supposed to evoke an atmosphere of sin and decadence, but it couldn't overcome the truth, the stench of cheap liquor, sweat, and come that spelled out sleaze. American rock music, ten years old or more, gave the bump-and-grind over loudspeakers that compensated for pour sound quality by cranking the volume up to maximum.

Christie felt almost as if her heart would burst from the excitement, certainly not from the strip joint's imitation of the arousing but from her mission, her purpose in being there. This was the acid test, after all. Years of training and practice were about to be put to the test. This was the real world, not a theoretical exercise.

Recognizing the need to control herself, she turned to the very first exercises Master Su had taught her. She'd been so different then, a tattered child of eleven rather than the sleek beauty she was now, but the deep breathing helped master her emotions now as much as it had then, despite the filthy air.

_I can do this. I'm ready_.

At the bar, she ordered a tomato juice. Alcohol was for victory celebrations, not on the job. The bartender gave her an odd look, though, and Christie realized she'd made her first error in judgment.

"But don't you know? I'm underage," she said, leaning forward and winking at the bartender. The pose gave him an excellent look at her cleavage; Christie was dressed "to kill," as it were, in a strapless red sheath, cut low on top and barely covering her thighs.

The bartender laughed, as she'd intended, and took a good look for himself while pouring her drink. A little electric thrill passed through her as she realized how easily she'd been able to distract him, turn his attention back on himself.

She sipped her drink as she let her eyes roam the club, gathering the layout in her mind and planning her approach, but the incident would not leave her. There was a lesson there, and not just in the pleasure it gave her to manipulate people. Three dancers were on the stage, in various states of undress, and they illustrated the point. Two of them were almost mechanical in their gyrations, flesh puppets on display, but the third was different. She seduced the crowd, she teased, she flirted. When a piece of clothing came off it did so with pride, as if she was conferring a reward on the watchers for observing. It wasn't just her motions, the contortions of her limbs and the way she accented them with eyes, mouth, and hands; it was an attitude that permeated everything she did, a pride in her sexuality.

Not surprisingly, of the men who watched the dancers instead of talking business with other men or a different sort of business with their female companions, it was this third dancer that drew the attention, pulled the eyes away. Indeed, more than one person had stopped what they were doing to watch her performance.

Christie included, come to think of it.

That was when she absorbed the lesson, one the seemingly sexless Master Su could not teach. Sex was power, but only if she embraced it, used it. A nice face and body, a sexy outfit, these only made you an object of desire--_object_ being the operative word.

The underworld was dominated by men, and Christie would never be one. So why try to be? She wasn't going to _apologize_ for being female. She was damned proud of it! That third dancer wasn't embarrassed or ashamed of being a woman and it made her appealing in ways no one in the room could escape.

_Time to show Liu what_ this _woman can do_.

She brushed off an eager patron who figured--with good reason--that there was only one kind of woman in Inferno. "Sorry, I'm taken," would only last so long before people started to ask questions.

Christie sashayed across the floor to the office corridor. A bouncer cut her off. He was shorter than her five-feet-ten but broad, his hair in a military buzz-cut. His gun was jammed into his waistband at the small of his back.

"That's far enough," he snapped.

She kept on, allowing herself to be stopped only when her body pressed up against his.

"I'm here to see Teak-Wood Fo," she said. "Three-Ox Liu thought I would be a fitting gift for his services." Let him interpret that truth as he would.

Christie could all but see the gears grinding in the bouncer's head. She'd invoked Liu's name, and the thug probably didn't have any idea that his boss was taking more than the usual off the top.

This was, of course, Christie's purpose in coming here. Fo had crossed the line between the reasonable greed allowed in a good criminal and actively stealing from the Red Phoenix. Punishment was necessary. There were, of course, many ways to accomplish this, but Liu had given the task to Christie as a test of her abilities. A chance, as the Mafia referred to it, to "make her bones." There was a condition; Fo had to be killed at the club, the site of his defalcations.

Symbolism, prestige, face. Whatever name one wished to give it, to an assassin it was often as important as the killing itself. Assassination was a message sent to the living. The origin of the word spoke of that, when the original _hashishin_ had slipped out to sow terror among the Crusaders.

Christie leaned into the guard. Her nipples had drawn up into stiff points from the anticipation, and they scraped against his chest through the thin silk of their clothes. She could see the heat rise in him, felt the hardening of his member against her leg. He pulled away in embarassment, his reaction settling the score in her favor.

"I'll...let him know you're here."

The guard opened the door and slipped inside. A moment later he returned to show her in.

Teak-Wood Fo sat behind a large Western-style desk of his namesake that was strewn with papers and ledgers. A half-empty bottle stood open next to an empty glass. Fo himself looked to be in his late forties, his thick build having run to plumpness. His face had suggestions that it had once been handsome, but that was gone now, the swollen, shiny flesh emphasizing his small, piglike eyes. Christie decided that he looked like a man ought who made his living from strippers and prostitutes.

"So, Three-Ox Liu sends me a pretty _gwai loh_ to play with. What, does he think I don't have girls enough of my own?"

"Maybe he thinks you could use some variety," she said, her tone flattering. She bent forward in a little bow, crossing her arms behind her back as she did. This brought her fingers where they needed to be, to the back of the waist-cinch built into the crimson dress. The bunched fabric concealed the slim, flat-bladed throwing knife, more of a spike than a true blade. When she straightened, her hand came back around, and the lethal knife exploded towards Teak-Wood Fo.

How had she given herself away? Was it in her manner? Her expression? Or was it that she'd acted too quickly, while Fo was still curious, still suspicious. Only the old and familiar was ever truly trusted. For she had given herself away, somehow. Fo's big hand flipped up a thick ledger from his desk, interrupting the knife's path to his heart.

_Damn!_

Fo bellowed, summoning help, even as he began scrabbling at his desk drawer with his free hand.

Christie reacted at once. She'd failed, and would either die here at Fo's whim or, if she escaped, would lose her future. Neither was acceptable. She leapt, hand on the edge of the desk, pivoting her body into a powerful jumping kick that struck Fo in the chest. She sprang back away, using the equal and opposite reaction from the double kick to come back into the room. The force of her _toku-so-soku_, meanwhile, had overbalanced Fo; he toppled back and fell over in a crash, chair and all.

Christie was already turning back to the office door, which was flung open as the bouncer charged in. He came to the obvious conclusion at once, unfortunately for Christie. She could see the light reflect off the high-gloss polish of his shoe as his foot shot off the floor in a roundhouse kick. She ducked at once, dropping into the _dokuja-fujin_ low to the ground.

The bouncer's kick whipped over her head with devastating power, but that power was completely wasted. His plant leg was left unprotected by the attack and in ducking the kick Christie was in perfect position to attack. Her stiffened fingers struck at the knee joint and it buckled.

This was the essence of _She Quan_ which emulated the serpent not only in the appearance of its movements but in its philosophy of attack. "The snake is weak," Master Su had taught Christie, "as are you. No matter how hard you train, the majority of your opponents will outmatch you in raw power, and certainly in sheer body mass. This does not trouble the snake. It strikes swiftly with poisoned fangs, destroying its enemies before they can even use their power." There were vulnerable points on the strongest body--the eyes, the throat, joints and nerve meridians--and _She Quan_ exploited them with speed and heartless efficiency.

As the bouncer staggered, Christie came to her feet and caught the man in a _kenpo-jako-shu_ move, snapping the off-balance thug past her and delivering a chop to the back of his neck. Now facing into the room, she saw Fo up on his knees, hauling open his right-hand desk drawer. It _had_ to be a gun. In desperation, Christie reached out and snatched the bouncer's gun from his waistband while striking him in the back to push him forward out of the line of fire.

The weapon was a cheap 9mm automatic of Russian make; a brush of Christie's thumb told her the safety was off. Teak-Wood Fo's gun was a Colt Python, a .357 Magnum quite capable of blowing a hole through the guard and Christie both at this range. In the second's grace while Fo swung the heavy weapon up on-line, Christie leveled and fired her stolen weapon, hoping that the bouncer was foolhardy enough to keep a round chambered.

The explosion seemed deafening in her ears, the gun trying to jerk out of her hand. Many martial arts masters scorned firearms, especially handguns. They were not part of a centuries-old tradition. They were an inflexible choice of weapon, capable of only one act, fundamentally limited in the strategies that grew from them. Master Su, however, had a different philosophy.

"You are not training to win a tournament, but to kill your enemies, and to do that you must learn all the possible options. My mother's ancestors were Japanese _samurai_, and look what happened to those proud warriors when they came face-to-face with firearms. Or the examples of your own English ancestors, whose longbows slaughtered French knights by the hundreds at Crecy and Poitiers. Your Christian Bible story of David and Goliath teaches the absolute folly of insisting on using hand weapons in a firefight. Choose a weapon to suit your strategy, not your strategy to suit your weapon! Only in this way will you destroy your enemies."

For an instant it seemed like Christie was in two offices at once, the cheap strip-club manager's decor overlain by the gorgeous fittings of her father's study. Her extended hand reached out not with a weapon of death but empty and pleading.

Then the vision was gone and the stench of cordite filled her nostrils as she fired again. Teak-Wood Fo's body jerked up and back under the impact of the slugs, blood spurting from the wounds in chest and skull. The Python dropped from numbed fingers and Fo slumped to the floor in death.

The bouncer turned, was coming back for her. Christie dropped the gun since in a close-range fight against a stronger opponent she'd be unlikely to be able to use it effectively. This surprised the guard; he'd already been trying to counter an attempt to shift her aim to him and was completely out of position to defend against the _jakei-renbu_, one of the most basic moves Master Su had taught her. Christie drove the stiffened tips of her fingers against the soft tissue of eyes and throat, felt the cricoid cartilage break under her hand. The bouncer began to choke, strangling from his suddenly cut-off supply of oxygen.

She had to act fast now; the shots would have been heard even over the pounding rock music outside and someone would certainly investigate sooner or later. Christie retrieved her knife and wiped the gun on the hem of her dress: she doubted the police would look very hard into an underworld killing but fingerprints could be entered into a computer database and come back to haunt her later. Then out the back door; she'd known a man like Fo would have one and he did, a short hall with locked doors on either end. The keys were on a ring in his pocket and in under two minutes from the time she'd fired the fatal shots she was walking away down the narrow alley behind the club, her first job complete.

What did she feel, she asked herself. Pride? Satisfaction? With her own hands she'd destroyed two human lives. That was supposed to have value, some kind of meaning. Shock, horror, or on a more philosophical level a sense of violation, even sin.

Yet she hadn't felt those things. The deaths of two people she'd never met had come and gone with nothing more or less than a faint thrill at the moment of the kill, the sense of exercising her power over another. _But why_ should _I care?_ she asked herself, the answer coming to her. _My feelings are about me, and those two were nothing to me._

What _did_ mean something to her, Christie realized in a wave of rising elation, was that the job was complete. She'd passed her first real test since she was thirteen, and the future was now open to her, the future she'd planned for these past five years.

The rich, satiated sound of her laughter rose through the alleys as she walked, not away from the dead of the past, but towards the dead of the future.


	5. Chapter 5

_Two Years Later..._

"Here's to success!" Liu said in English and lifted his glass. They were drinking champagne, so Christie met his toast with her own, the crystal flutes clinking together. She didn't particularly like champagne; when she drank she preferred something with a kick to it. Scotch, preferably, or her favorite cocktail, a Bloody Mary. She was still young enough to enjoy the irony when she ordered one.

"Indeed."

The terraced dining room looked out over Repulse Bay, with glass walls letting diners partake of the twilight sun sparkling off the water without having to admit insects, humidity, or pollution. The sky was streaked with orange and red, heralding the coming darkness.

"So," Christie asked, deftly cutting into her salmon almondine, "why this?" She indicated the restaurant with a circling wave of her fork. The chef had been there only three months and already Renard's was said to offer the best French cuisine in the city. "I've never known you to favor Western food."

"Can't a man act on a whim?"

She laughed then, letting the faintest hint of mockery slip into the tone, just enough to tease without insult.

"A whim? Liu, you've never acted on a whim in your life."

He tilted his head to the side, an expression just like a curious puppy. Seeing it on this man, who was as _unlike_ a _puppy_ as anyone she knew, almost made Christie burst out laughing. Only with effort did she hold her tongue.

"Really? I seem to recall one particular whim that played out rather well for us both."

Christie dismissed that with a wave of one gloved hand. The formal outfit was another thing not really to her taste. Give her a midriff-baring T-shirt or something in tight black leather, and a hard rock beat blaring from dance club speakers instead of this overdone luxury. Not that luxury didn't beat hell out of the back streets, having to fight for survival, but for a celebration.

"That wasn't a whim. That was intuition. Instinct. You've got more of that than any man I know."

"You're flattering me."

"It isn't just me. Master Su says that's why he calls you 'tiger,' not for your fighting style. You sense opportunity, in and out of combat, and you act at once without having to stop and make plans. There's no hesitation in you, no fear."

In saying it, Christie realized something else, that this was the quality she found most enticing in Three-Ox Liu. The Red Phoenix's 438 was a powerfully attractive man. His body was part of it, his size and strength, but even that was really more of an extension of his will. She'd known equally big men who nonetheless lacked the aura of physicality Liu had, the sense of being engulfed in the presence that he projected, and this was all a function of his strong will, the force and resolve of his personality. She found herself wondering how those hard, flat muscles would feel under her hands, resisting the pressure of her avid fingers.

It was only when her own thoughts began to turn in that direction that things fell into place for her. She'd never considered Liu before in a sexual sense; his role in her life was too well-defined in other ways, and besides, he was forty-one, with a son Christie's age...but society defines what was attractive in a man in ways that aren't associated with youth alone. There and then, Christie's body was telling her that it wanted very much to take Liu to bed, and once she started thinking in terms of seduction she realized that she was in the middle of one.

It almost made her laugh. The expensive restaurant and the fancy dinner was the setting, and the fact that the restaurant was that of a first-class hotel was convenient, to say the least.

She wondered what could have been going through Liu's mind. For two years, his relationship with her had been simple. He identified targets, provided any necessary requirements for the job--time, place, method--and she unfailingly carried the orders out. There was a curious intimacy to it, not just from the fact that they were bringing death to others, but because of the isolation of Christie's position. She wasn't a member of the triad, a part and parcel of their plans, but Liu's freelancer. Indeed, some of the kills she'd made were, to the best of her knowledge, to suit Liu's personal agenda instead of the triad's.

That kind of intimacy, though, wasn't the kind that naturally led to the bedroom. Partners in crime, perhaps? Or the link between the elemental passions of sex and death? These didn't fit with the coldness that went between employer and assassin. But it had undeniably happened; Liu's eyes were, she now saw, hot upon her.

It was too bad, really, that she couldn't give him the chance to go through with it. Underworld gossip was high on Liu's prowess with women, and Christie didn't doubt it was true.

"So tell me," she said, hastily picking up the thread of the conversation, "has that resolve been rewarded?"

Liu smiled broadly, a grinning Bhudda of a face.

"It has. Venerable Pien has confirmed it. I am to be his appointed successor." Venerable Pien was the 489, the head of the Red Phoenix.

"It must have been difficult for him to put aside his nephew in your place."

"There was no other choice. Anthony Pien may be excellent with finances, but he is an accountant, a paper-pusher. He embarrassed himself with his inability to solve the war with the 14K over the opium trade, which in turn I was able to do."

Liu's success in that matter, Christie knew, was entirely due to her. The harbormaster had had his pockets well filled by the 14K to arrange for tip-offs of customs raids and to leak information about Red Phoenix shipments to the law. Christie's knife had provided an opening in the position, and his replacement had been a man whose personal sexual habits were well detailed in her father's records. Thus no matter how much _h'yueng yau_, the fragrant grease, the 14K tried to spread they would not find him amenable to their persuasions. Thus by taking Christie under his wing five years past, he'd come to within a single step of his ultimate ambition.

_It has worked out nicely, hasn't it?_ she thought. _For him...and for me._

"So this is a celebration, then."

"It is."

"In which case," she said, "I have something that might serve to make the night even more special."

She reached into her purse and placed something on the crisp, white linen tablecloth.

It was a room key from the hotel.

-X X X-

Liu could not believe his good fortune. He'd fully intended to take Christie to bed that night and it seemed that rather than have to seduce her into it she'd had the same intent all along. And why not? It had been the two of them together than had sealed Liu's forthcoming ascension. Her expertise at killing--which he'd cleverly cultivated--and the data she'd brought him--which he'd had the good sense to pursue. A liaison with her was only closing the circle, in a way, an acknowledgment of the goof fortune she'd brought.

Not that it hurt at all that she'd grown up from a malnourished waif to a stunning young woman. Perhaps because he himself was so big, Liu preferred tall and curvaceous women to petite ones, and Christie was just that type. And she carried herself like she knew it, too, as if she could feel his thoughts and liked them/

_To hell with fate, luck, or that mystic rot_, Liu told himself with blunt honesty. _You're aching to get your hands on her_. As they rode the overdecorated elevator, all dark wood and baroque gilt, she stood just close enough to him so that her hip brushed his thigh and it was all he could do not to push her up against the elevator wall, cover her mouth with his, and take her there. He probably would have, had there not been other people riding with them.

They went to her room, which was not so well-appointed as the suite Liu had chosen but had the distinct advantage of being _hers_. A woman was always far more amenable when she believed things were proceeding on her terms. Even as the door slammed shut he drew her hard against her, kissed her. Her arms wound around his neck and Liu realized that some part of his awareness had still made sure her hands were empty. This kind of attention to personal safety could not be turned on and off. Especially when one was dealing with someone of Christie's particular talents.

Oddly enough, he found that this did not distract him from his arousal but rather heightened it. Liu was aching with need as she slithered from his grasp. She walked--no, strutted--away from him, her body holding his gaze as if by magnetic force. Christie reached for a door handle and turned it.

"I'll be right back, Liu, just as soon as I...what's the phrase? Yes, 'slip into something more comfortable.'" She even made a production out of sliding around the half-opened door, finally blowing him a kiss before slipping behind it and pulling it shut.

_Where did she learn to tease a man like that?_ Liu marveled. He wanted to pursue, but restrained himself, wanting even more to see what she would do next.

He didn't have long to wait.

It happened no more than a minute after she'd left the room. Christie reappeared, but not in person. Instead, the screen of a laptop computer that had been sitting open on the dresser came to life. The machine had been on but in sleep mode; Liu had barely registered its presence. A video was playing now, apparently over a wireless Internet connection.

"Congratulations, Liu," Christie said. "It seems you've attained the pinnacle of power you've always dreamed of. I'm afraid, though, that I have other plans. I understand that you have hopes of establishing a family dynasty at the head of the Red Phoenix, so I'd advise you to sit and listen...if you should care about that."

The webcam zoomed out, revealing a hotel room much like the one Liu was in. Those details were peripheral, though. His attention was entirely caught by the young Chinese man seated in the straight-backed chair. Steel flex was wound around his body, holding him firmly anchored to the seat, and speckles of blood showed here and there on his white shirt and khaki slacks. A red rubber ball gag had been jammed into his mouth, the straps distorting the shape of his cheeks and jawline. A cut on his forehead was mostly scabbed over. Anger warred with fear in the boy's eyes, and was losing.

"You do _not_ want to make any sudden moves that might cause my hand to slip," she advised. That hand held a stiletto which was pressed up against the throat of the young man. The warning was well-advised, for Liu was possessed at once with the same emotions that possessed the boy: fury at the predicament, terror at the possible consequences.

Fear was not an old friend with Three-Ox Liu the way it was with some men, but he felt its icy grip on his heart, choking his windpipe closed.

The young Chinese man was Liu's son. His only child.


	6. Chapter 6

Three-Ox Liu stared mutely at the computer screen, unable to believe his eyes. His protege, Christie, the girl whom he'd rescued, seen to her training, and made her into the assassin that was his hidden advantage in the Hong Kong underworld, held a knife to the throat of Liu's only son.

"Sheng..." he whispered aloud.

He had no illusion that Christie would hesitate to slash the young man's throat. Liu himself had seen that spark--or perhaps that _lack_--in her when she was just thirteen, had cultivated it until she was a paid killer of notable talents. What he didn't, couldn't understand was _why_.

"What's the meaning of this?" he roared, assuming that a microphone, webcam, or both was connecting the computer to the room where she held Sheng hostage.

"Are you listening now, Liu? Good. You're probably asking yourself what, why, all the usual questions. Don't worry; I'm going to explain. Edgar Allan Poe once wrote that a wrong was 'unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong,' and he was completely correct."

"Revenge? I've given you everything that you are!"

"Revenge is a dish best served cold, Liu. Master Su taught me that. Did you know that I'd been his student for two years before you ever met me? It's no surprise that you thought of him when you saw me. It was a plan, you see. Lo Whan was a petty crook with too much ambition operating too near Red Phoenix interests. I used my father's data to make him overreach himself, so that you'd come down on him with your customary brutal efficiency. Master Su judged that curiosity and ambition would make you willing to talk to me, and of course he was right. It was hilarious that you 'introduced' me to Master Su as part of your 'payment' for what I knew, but it goes to show your perception, your instinct for a situation. It's too bad that instinct didn't tell you that you were being set up, but that's your major flaw. The problem with being a tiger is that you have a tiger's ego; you expect things to go your way, fate to turn in your favor and so you don't question unexpected good fortune."

Liu's brain was racing as he tried to digest what she'd said. Their original meeting had been orchestrated? How was that even possible? It would require the manipulation of several people, including himself, to say nothing of a great deal of luck.

Yet, he remembered all too well his own reactions to the events of that night. He'd felt the hand of fate behind everything, putting life in order for Liu's success. Only, it hadn't been good _joss_ but the hand of a master planner.

Christie might have had a talent for deception, but it hadn't been her plan. It relied too much on information she'd had no access to at her age, both of personalities and of underworld dynamics. She herself had claimed Master Su had assisted, but why? Liu had been on friendly terms with the snake master for years.

_You can trust a snake...to act in its own interests._ Did he had some unstated grudge? Or was it that he wished to help his student?

Liu thrust the puzzle aside angrily. None of this was important now! He could not afford to be distracted, not if he wanted to save Sheng.

"It all worked out so perfectly, didn't it?" Christie said. "Thanks to you, I had my entree into the underworld. You saw what I was capable of and gave me the chance to use it. Of course, I had to keep you close, but that was easy. And by not inducting me into the Red Phoenix, keeping me as your independent contractor, you gave me the opportunity to make outside contacts. After all, I don't think that you'll be as enthusiastic a patron for me after today."

She tapped the point of her stiletto against her lower lip as she talked, assuming a parody of a thoughtful attitude. She was almost flirtatious in her manner, macabrely so.

"You really should have suspected, Liu, when you heard my name. Isn't it just a _little_ too coincidental that you'd destroy my family, and then I'd show up in your life three years later bearing gifts?"

"Your father killed himself! I had nothing to do with it!" he shouted, but she was already continuing, and now there was nothing flirtatious or posed about her. The camera had zoomed in on Christie's face, and her eyes were cold. Something dark and sharp was in them, as Liu imagined they'd look at the moment of the kill.

"Did you think I wouldn't be curious? Father was a gambler, and you'd bought up his debts. You had some directly as overseer of Red Phoenix gambling operations, but you'd acquired all of it. I can only assume that you wanted leverage, a door into the financial markets both to launder your triad profits and to tap for additional gain. But then he lost his job. He might have overcome that. A financial genius can always find work in Hong Kong; a crooked one might even have a _better_ chance if he played his cards right. He could have come around--except that you called in his markers. _All_ of them. Was there pressure on you to make something back from the capital you spent? Or were you just scared--or stupid?" She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The point is, you were the one who forced him into the corner. You took away my family, Liu, my entire life as it had been."

She smiled at him.

"I think you know what happens now."

Liu was on his feet in an instant, flying to the door Christie had vanished through. It was locked, of course, but Liu had expected that and his charge broke it open with a screech of hinges bending, screws tearing out of the doorframe. She was expecting him, no doubt, perhaps was ready with a gun to ambush him upon entry, but if he could act quickly he was sure he could take her, even if he had to give his life in the process.

Only she wasn't there. The door did not lead to another room in the suite as he'd thought, but to an adjoining hotel room, which gave it access to the hall. The video that had played was not a broadcast in real time from another computer, but prerecorded, as certain conversations should have told him.

He hadn't wanted to believe it, though, because a pre-recorded message meant that there was no hope, no chance to change the outcome, so he'd ignored the evidence that said Christie had walked through the door, signaled the computer remotely to begin playback, and strolled out of the door of the adjoining room. By now she wouldn't even be in the hotel, her escape plans no doubt already formulated well in advance.

She'd left him a present, though. Sheng Liu was still in the chair from the video, still bound, still gagged. A leather-bound copy of the complete works of Poe had been placed in his lap, open to the first page of "The Cask of Amontillado." The blood spattering the cream-colored paper and Sheng's shirtfront was a rusty brown color, telling Liu that his son had been dead before the first course at dinner had been served.

Christie snapped her cell phone shut the moment the computer's webcam broadcast showed Liu breaking down the door. With a flick of her wrist it went sailing into a nearby garbage can; such things could be traced and like any modern crime syndicate the Red Phoenix was well-versed in the electronic arena. Nor could be sure that the carefully constructed dossier she'd prepared would be placed in Venerable Pien's hands soon enough for Liu to lose control of triad assets. He would lose that control sooner or later; explaining just why he'd deliberately undercut the 489's nephew in a highly profitable operation would be neither easy nor pleasant.

As for her, Christie was sick of Hong Kong. Her particular specialties were already in demand, and there were markets in Japan, America, and Europe where she might make her fortune. Her resume, after all, was exceptional, and with her bridges burned and memories laid to rest, it was time to move on, free of the shell of her past.

Her forefinger flicked the single tear off her right cheek and she strode off towards the beach and the waiting launch.

-X X X-

_The Present_

"Of course there's more, the journey between then and now when I came to work full-time for DOATEC," Christie said. She hadn't moved from her position atop Arnholt while she spun out her story. "But I suppose you don't want to hear that, mm, do you?"

She bent her head and kissed his throat, her lips resting softly against the pulse. Arnholt's skin was cool under hers, and the artery was still. Christie smiled, wondering at what precise moment his heart had stopped. He'd barely felt the prick of the needle in among her nails raking his back--and, of course, at that particular moment he'd hardly been aware of anything above the waist, anyway. Then it had just been a matter of waiting for the toxin to take effect, paralyzing the muscle fibers of the heart.

As she'd told him, they'd had time.

The assassin slipped from the bed and began to dress, donning underwear and the skimpy halter and miniskirt, then settled the long honey-blonde wig into place. Arnholt had thought the wig was to protect them from having their affair detected, which in a way it was. Christie fished his wallet out of his pants and extracted the cash, then tossed the billfold away casually. That should finish the picture nicely. Businessman takes whore to hotel room, overestimates his capacity and suffers a heart attack, whore gets scared, steals businessman's money, and vanishes. That the sex had had a little chemical help in stopping his heart would go unnoticed without a sophisticated toxicological exam, which an overstressed M.E. wouldn't likely order--particularly with DOATEC putting on the pressure to cover up the embarrassing circumstances of Arnholt's death.

Christie took out her cell phone and dialed, waiting patiently for the click of an answer and then the sequence of beeps indicating that the phone at the far end was decoding DOATEC's latest encryption of the digital signal.

"Hello, Victor," she said. "I don't think you're going to have to worry about losing your funding for Project Omega any more." She laughed at his response, then hung up, slipped the phone back into her purse, and stood. Even as she strutted out the door in the swivel-hipped sashay enforced by her stiletto heels, Christie was already looking forward to her next job. She gave no more thought to the debris of her last than a snake did for its shed skin.


End file.
